Braveheart

by Randall Wallace

  But as they saw the main body of Scots on the road, the civilians fled across the farmland, leaving behind a tangle of carts for the army to shove out of the way like a plow cutting through a field.

  In camp two nights before, Wallace had asked old Campbell to find him the best carpenters in their army. These men Wallace combined with a group of Highlanders handpicked for their ability to move quickly through hostile ground. He had given these men instructions and sent them off while it was still dark. Now, as they reached the last thick stand of trees before York, one of those same Highlanders ran out to him and led Wallace and his lieutenants into the woods, where they came upon a massive contraption; its wooden wheels were as tall as the carpenters who had made them, and piled above them were thick trees lashed together and covered with layers of tangled brush to screen stones and arrows away from the warriors who would push it all.

  Wallace nodded his approval. The battering ram was ready.

  Standing on one of the tall stone parapets flanking the entrance of his city, just as night was falling, the governor of York looked down at the people far below him, banging on the thick wooden gate and begging to be let in, and their cries made him angry. He was tempted to order his archers to shoot them. “What is wrong with those people?!” He demanded of the captain who stood next to him, surveying their defenses. “Don’t they know this city cannot be taken?”

  The captain saw the irony of the question as the citizens who lived outside the wall and were even now pleading and lifting their children in the air, as if showing them to the soldiers lining the parapets would soften their hearts enough to unbar the great gates and allow a few more to rush inside. A professional soldier, the captain saw the danger; the desperate citizens saw the city as secure — their cries made those already inside feel safer still — but the truth was the York was vulnerable. The governor has dispatched more than half of the city’s potential defenders to the various outlying towns and hamlets that had been calling fro reinforcements. Now York itself was jammed with the governor’s supporters, flatterers, favorites, and hangers-on, everyone who fled to the shadow of the great city at the first whiff of trouble and who had the influence to gain admittance. But there were not enough fighting men.

  The captain, who made more of Wallace’s victory at Stirling than did the governor, knew it was possible that Wallace had intentionally concocted the depletion of the city’s forces through a shrewdly planned campaign of raiding to draw the defenders away. Wallace was unpredictable; and these royal relatives who ran the English army, they were too predictable. The captain hurried off to direct the preparations for defense against a full assault, walking away even as the royal governor was talking.

  “We will not allow a bandit, to panic the greatest city in northern England!” the governor was saying to no one now. And then, looming out of the gray twilight, he saw them, the entire Scottish army coming at the city in a trot. Among the vanguard of foot soldiers rode William Wallace, huge broadsword strapped across his back. Behind him was the ram.

  The civilians saw him, too. Their screams grew more frantic, they pounded on the gate with increased panic — and then suddenly they fled.

  The captain appeared again beside the governor, and looking at those who had been shut out, running now to get as far away from the city as possible, he thought, Do they flee because they know we won’t let them in? Or is it because they no longer wish to be inside?

  Watching the Scots come on like an endless black cloud building into a relentless storm, the governor turned to the captain and asked, “Find every Scottish civilian in the city — traders, craftsmen, and their families all of them — and bring them to me. I especially want the ones wearing the Scottish cloth. Fetch them all.

  The captain did not understand the purpose of the order, but he did not challenge it, for he saw on the governor’s face a look worthy of his uncle, Longshanks the King.

  The battering ram, thrust by two dozen of Wallace’s favorite Highlanders, picked up speed and slammed into the wooden gate of the city. With the collision, the battle was on. Flaming arrows sliced through the night; pots of boiling oil splashed down from the parapets onto the attackers who swarmed the gate.

  The oil beat the first wave of Scots back, but Wallace rushed forward and grabbed the ram cart with his own hands. The attackers rallied to him and helped him slam the gate again and again. The arrows, stones, and oil from the parapets caught some men, but the ram was well designed and sheltered most. The gates, rising twenty feet high, cracked and then broke altogether, but behind it was an awful tangle of carts, broken sheds, impenetrable rubbish. Wallace grabbed a torch, threw it into the wooden tangle, and shouted, “Black! Wait for it to burn!”

  Inside the city, the captain hurried into the tower room where the governor had taken refuge. “M’lord, they’ve breached the wall!”

  “Then do as I ordered.”

  Outside the walls, the Scots waited, biding their time as the barrier burned. Suddenly they looked up in horror, the English were throwing the bodies of hung Scots over the wall. Men, women, even children, dangling at the ends of nooses.

  The Highlanders stared in mute shock. Wallace was frozen; for a moment he was a boy again, back in MacAndrews’s barn, staring up at hanged bodies he could scarcely believe were real.

  His men charged forward.

  “Stop!” Wallace screamed. “Not yet! Listen to me!” The clansmen heeded the only voice they would have obeyed at that moment. “They wish to frighten us! Or goad us into attacking too soon! But don’t look away! Look!"

  The Scots looked at the hanging bodies.

  “Behold the enemy we fight!” Wallace thundered. “We will be more merciful than they have been. We will spare women, children, and priests! For all others, no mercy!”

  Wallace drew his broadsword. The burning debris inside the gate collapsed and left a tunnel through the fire. Wallace screamed and led the charge.

  35

  WITHIN THE TAPESTRIES WALLS OF HIS LONDON APARTMENTS, Price Edward and his friend Peter heard a contingent of horsemen clatter into the courtyard below. They looked out the window and saw the arrival of Longshanks. They leaned back into the room, and Edward began to pace nervously.

  “It is not your fault! Stand up to him,” Peter urged.

  Edward showed Peter the dagger he had concealed in his belt behind his back. “I will stand up to him and more.”

  Longshanks banged the door open and staled in angrily, followed by two advisors. First he glared at Peter with obvious loathing, then turned his piercing stare to his own son. “What news of the north?” Longshanks said, his voice husky with anger.

  “Nothing new, Majesty,” Edward answered. “We have sent riders to speed any word.” They had known for some time of the massacre at Stirling, but they had heard nothing for days from York. Edward had sent an angry message to his cousin, York’s governor, demanding to know why no intelligence had been coming down from the north. His cousin knew Longshanks was returning to London and would be furious. Edward suspected his cousin was intentionally trying to erode the prince’s relationship with the king even further.

  “Our army wiped out at Stirling, and you have done nothing?!” Longshanks spat and, choking on his own bile, began to cough.

  “I have ordered conscriptions. Through all of the autumn and winter we can raise a new army. And through that same winter we can starve the Scots. By next spring they will have hung this bandit Wallace themselves and will beg us to come rule over them!” Edward delivered this speech, rehearsed and revised with Peter’s great care, and glanced to his friend for his approval. Peter nodded subtly and glanced back to the Longshanks.

  But before the kind could respond, a messenger rushed in, bowing as he entered. Seeing the king there, too, he hesitated, not knowing whether to hand the message he carried to the prince, who had dispatched him, or to the king himself. “Here, give it to me!” the prince ordered, feeling a growing sense of being in command.

&nb
sp; The messenger handed the price the scroll he had brought. Edward unsealed it, read the message, and nearly lost his balance. He stared around the room blankly, as if he had forgotten where he was and who these people were who stood there with him.

  “What is it?” Longshanks demanded.

  “Wallace has sacked York.”

  “Impossible,” Longshanks answered. He turned on the messenger. “How dare you bring a panicky lie!”

  The messenger had also brought a basket. He approached the central table with great dread, placed the basket on it, and uncovered its contents. Prince Edward was closest; he peered in, then staggered back. Longshanks moved to the sack coldly, looked in, and withdrew the severed head of his nephew, York’s governor. Former governor.

  Peter, seeing Edward falter, spoke up quickly. “Sire! They own nephew! What beast could do such a thing?!” he said.

  The kind seemed not to have heard. He dropped the head back into the sack, unmoved. After a moment he said, “If he can sack York, he can invade lower England.”

  “We would stop him!” Peter insisted.

  “Edward, who is this who speaks to me as if I needed his advice?”

  The prince looked up and drew himself into a defiant posture. “I have declared Peter my high counselor,” he announced to his father.

  Longshanks nodded as if impressed. He moved to Peter and examined the gold chain of office that the young man wore about his neck. Then Longshanks seized Peter by the throat and the waistbelt and threw him out the window, the same one Edward and Peter had looked out, six stories above the courtyard. Peter screamed, but not until he was almost to the ground.

  Edward rushed toward the window in horror. He looked out at the man he had loved, the only one he had ever fully trusted, broken and bloody on the paving stones far below. He stared for a long time. Then Edward drew himself back inside the room and turned toward his father in shock and hatred and only then remembered the dagger.

  He drew it and went for his father.

  He stabbed at Longshanks. The old king dodged back, shouting to the advisors who jumped forward to interfere, ” No, let him come!” The kind smiled at the attack, parrying with his left arm, letting it be cut. His eyes burned. “Your fight back at last!”

  Then Longshanks unleashed his own hateful fury; he grappled with Edward, knocked the dagger away, hurled him to the floor, and began to kick his son. Again and again he kicked, exhausting his strength and his fury on the young man, broken in heart and in spirit.

  Edward lay passive and bloody; Longshanks coughed up a bit of blood. He ignored it and his son’s wreckage and went back to the discussion as if this fight was normal business.

  “We must sue for a truce,” Longshanks said, still winded but trying to hide it, as if even to be breathing hard after beating his son was an insult to his own manhood. “Failing that, we must buy him off. But who will go to him? Not I. If I came under the sword of this murderer, I would end up like my nephew. And not you. If an enemy of England saw my faggot son, he would rather be encouraged to take over this country. So whom do I sent?”

  Longshanks calculated.

  36

  AT THE CITY OF YORK, EVERYTHING HAD CHANGED. THE walls were still there, but there were no longer any gates. The streets lay deserted. The Scottish warriors who had fought since Stirling, some of them since Lanark, and had covered hundreds of miles in relentless marches, had slept in wind and rain and frost with little more than their tartans to wrap around their bodies for shelter, now found the vacant buildings of this English city to be repellent. They took what food they could find and carried it outside the walls, where they built cook fires and made their encampment beneath the stars.

  Since taking the city, they had rested, letting wounds heal, mending woolens, and sharpening weapons, for they knew more battle was coming. Some busied themselves in plunder of the city’s goods, but others cared nothing for that. They were Highlanders — farmers, herders of sheep. What did an English city have that they needed? York was just the first stop! They fought under William Wallace, and with Wallace leading them, they could fight into London itself!

  Wallace, Hamish, and Stephen were within the late governor’s map room, poring over the finest intelligence Longshanks’s royal servants could offer. They had maps of roads, harbors, trading points, wells, everything they could want to know to plan their next move. A man didn’t even need to be able to read to glean the riches of the maps — everything on the parchments was portrayed with fine drawings, some of them illuminated with colored pigments. Hamish, somewhat dazzled by it all, looked up from the map he had been studying and said, “It’s a banquet either way we choose. West are farms full of meat, east and towns fully of drink.”

  Stephen piped up, “I say drink first and eat later and as usual the Almighty aggress with me.”

  Wallace shook his head. “South. We attack south. Where they have Longshanks.”

  Campbell hurried in, so excited he could hardly get the words out. “A royal carriage comes. An entourage. They sent riders under a banner of truce, asking you to meet them at a crossroad. The carriage flies the banners of Longshanks himself!”

  “What if it’s an embush?” Hamish wondered.

  “I hope it’s an ambush,” Stephen said. ” I haven’t killed an Englishman in five days.

  Wallace buckled on his sword.

  Taking six riders with him on the road and deploying Serous and his Highlanders to scurry through the woods on either side as a screen against ambush, Wallace traveled the short distance to the designated crossroad. When they were almost there, the Scots stopped as they had planned, and serous went forward alone, silent as a shadow. He returned in ten minutes and reported to Wallace. “It’s a pavilion tent out in the middle of the grass. Fancy. I counted ten soldiers outside and could make out one, maybe two more, in the shade inside. But no ambush. I circled the whole camp. But we’ll be in the woods just in case.”

  Wallace and his lieutenants remounted their horses when serous topped them. “One other thing Strange. The soldiers aren’t English.”

  “What do you mean they aren’t English?” Stephen said.

  “Let Seorus talk,” Wallace said for the sake f Stephen more than for Seorus. Seorus was a compact, tightly muscled Highlander, leader of a band of mountain warriors who followed Wallace with financial devotion. Seorus, like the others he had brought down from the Highlands, was intensely loyal and intensely proud; if anyone doubted him, especially in the presence of Wallace, he tended to kill without warning.

  “I mean not English in the sense that they are French,” Seorus said with a slight glance toward Stephen. “French it not English. Or would you care to argue about that?”

  “It just makes no sense, that’s all,” Stephen said.

  “Seorus,” Wallace broke in, “let’s move.”

  Seorus waved for his clan to follow him, and Wallace rode ahead with the horsemen into the crossroads itself. There they found it exactly as Seorus said: a royal carriage to the side of the tent, out in the middle of a sun-drenched meadow, with nearly a dozen soldiers milling about, and not stocky Englishmen clothed in red but slender Frenchmen in royal French blue.

  Wallace and his men rode in a complete circle around the tent. The soldiers watched warily, but they were disciplined and made no threatening moves. The Scots stopped thirty feet from the tent entrance.

  No sound from the tent. Wallace rested his hand on the handle of his broadsword, ready.

  “Longshanks! I have come!”

  Servants pulled back the sides of the tent door, and a tall, slender, shapely female figure appeared. There in the shadows, she looked just like Murron! William was not the only one who noticed the resemblance; he glanced at Hamish and Campbell and saw them haunted by it, too. Was this another dream? William paled as she stepped into the morning sun. She moved toward him, her face lowered. It was Murron! He was dreaming again — or he was insane.

  She reached him, lifted her face — and he
saw the princes.

  Not Murron! And yet as William saw the princes more closely, he was still shaken by the resemblance. In the way she carried herself, in her shape, in the way the regal lace framed her face as wedding lace had once framed Murron’s she hunted the empty rooms in the secret chambers of his heart.

  And while the princes reminded, William Wallace of everything he had loved and lost, he haunted her with everything she wanted and had never found. Tall, powerful, commanding his shoulders thick, his hair wild, his eyes soft, even pained. A man facing the hatred of the world’s most powerful king; a man who had won great battles and commanded armies, yet who looked as if he could spur his horse away right now and ride away from adoration and glory and never miss any of it. She had never seen a man like this. She had never known such a one existed.

  Wallace dismounted and moved to face her. Their eyes hung on each other. She saw something that she had not seen in the face of a man in her whole life. It was grief. Whatever else they said about him, this must she knew was true:” He had loved the woman he had lost; the pain of it was still etched in his face.

  She surprised him by bending at the knee in a half-submissive yet proud curtsey.

  “I am the Princess of Wales,” she said.

  “Wife of Edward, the king’s son?” William asked.

  She nodded; somehow she was already ashamed. “I am sorry to be a disappointment. I come as the king’s servant and with his authority,” the princess said.